No one was going to turn Adrian Gonzalez into something he wasn't. Not even a football coach at Eastlake High in Chula Vista.

“I played JV football,” Gonzalez said. “I was in line to be the varsity quarterback but decided to go baseball.

“Football, the attitude and mentality, just wasn't for me. Guys wanted you to be a certain way, just because it was the football way.

“To me, that was tired. Be yourself.”

Gonzalez had the arm for quarterbacking, plus the toughness.

What he lacked was the rah-rah manner that some coaches want from their quarterback.

“The guy I played for, the reason I stopped playing, he wanted me to yell at guys, to yell in the huddle and pump up guys,” he said. “I looked at him and said, 'That's not me.'

“He said, 'It's football, come on.'

“I said, 'I'm going to go play baseball.'”

Smart move.

Two years later, after batting .645 in his final two seasons at Eastlake High and winning Player of the Year honors from The San Diego Union-Tribune, Gonzalez was chosen first overall by the Florida Marlins in the 2000 amateur draft.

His dark brown eyes serious, Gonzalez raised his voice slightly as he recounted the football story.

“If I am a soft-spoken leader, I'm going to be a soft-spoken leader,” he said. “I'm not going to go out of who I am.”

• • •

Told last August that several Padres regarded him as a leader, Gonzalez replied quickly.

“I'm not a leader,” he said.

Truth be told, Gonzalez was struggling to save himself.

In the so-called dog days, he appeared to sometimes jog out doubles that could have been triples.

His eyes glazed over as Padres defeats mounted.

Reining in his habit of punctuating a teammate's great play with a congratulatory shake of his glove after catching the ball, the first baseman appeared more subdued.

The losing had gotten to him.

Somewhere along the road to 99 defeats – the most by a Padres club since 1993 – Adrian Gonzalez became less engaged to the whole baseball experience.

Of little consolation was his first All-Star selection, or the career-high 36 home runs and 119 RBI and the first Gold Glove that was to come in November.

The constant losing drove the Padres' best hitter batty.

“It's almost like you are going through the motions,” he said. “You never want that to happen.”

He'd known mostly good times since the team he had rooted for while growing up in either Tijuana or Bonita and Chula Vista acquired him from the Rangers in January 2006, along with pitcher Chris Young, a trade that ranks as among the best in Padres history.

Gonzalez, a smooth first baseman with all-fields power, contributed a .304 batting average and 24 home runs to his first Padres team, which won the National League West before getting the first-round boot from a St. Louis Cardinals club that would win the World Series.

The following year brought more drama, the Padres coming within one victory of their third consecutive playoff trip and Gonzalez batting .282 with 30 home runs and 100 RBI.

Then came 2008 – six months of losing records by the Padres after a victory on Opening Day.

Gonzalez fairly shuddered as he recalled it.

“To me, it's all about winning,” he said. “It's all about winning. The minute you are mathematically eliminated, it's kind of tough to finish out the year.

“The fact that we owe it to baseball and that we owe it to the fans to play hard every day, that's the only thing that kept me going. You owe it to the team. But there's nothing to play for if you are mathematically eliminated.”

He smiled. “The only thing to play for then,” he said, “is to beat up the Dodgers and hopefully they don't make it.”

This year, Padres players again will look to Gonzalez, 26, as a leader. And that's fine by him.

He's not going to fake it. There will be no screaming, no rah-rah speeches from the former quarterback.

Lead he will, though.

“I'm more apt to say it this year, if I feel there is something we could do as a team or something that needs to change,” he said. “I will be more apt to say it and not stay quiet about it. With the guys we've got, approaching guys about certain situations might be helpful for us.”

It would be better if he could bottle his batting talent and give it to several teammates.

Courtesy of baseball analyst Bill James, also a senior adviser for baseball operations with the Red Sox, here is a statistic that sums up Gonzalez's offensive contributions last season:

“Adrian Gonzalez finished third in the National League with 119 RBIs, batting in 19 percent of San Diego's total runs. That was the highest percentage in the majors. Ryan Howard batted in 18 percent of the Phillies'runs. Gonzalez also raised his batting average with runners in scoring position by 68 points (compared to his batting with no one on base) and his slugging percentage by 152 points.”

• • •

Some folks think it's OK to write off a season for the long-term good.

Cut the payroll, empty the farm system, see who can play and who can't. That's what the mid-revenue Padres appear to be doing. Their payroll for 2009 is the second-lowest in the majors.

For the players themselves, the prospect of a no-hope season is another matter. Losing takes its toll on players who believe that winning is why you play the game.

“It's all about winning with Adrian,” said his longtime agent, John Boggs, whose client will make $3 million this season, $4.75 million in 2010 and can become a free agent after the 2011 season when the Padres have a $5.7 million club option. “He needs that. I do worry about him if there's going to be more years like last year's. I worry how he's going to react if the Padres are going to have more seasons like that one.”

This year, the Padres are widely expected to finish last in their division or near it, though many pundits also say the National League West is more forgiving than most, if not all, of baseball's other five divisions.

Gonzalez and teammates have to assume they can win, or why play the games?

“Anything can happen,” manager Bud Black told Padres players when he addressed them at the start of spring training.

Said Gonzalez: “I really feel like we have a chance to win the division. My goal is to do everything I can do both on the field and in this clubhouse to help this team play to its full potential, and if we play to our full potential, we can make a run for the division.”

Told that he has to say such things, Gonzalez replied: “There's saying that just because you've gotta say it, and there's saying it just because you really feel it, and I really feel like we do have a chance.

“I think the division is going to be competitive. If we can get the young guys to play to their abilities and round up the team, I think we're going to be right in the middle of everything and we can make a run for it.”

Baseball America ranks the Padres' farm system 29th of 30, but some of the young players who have graduated from the system give Gonzalez hope. He mentioned, among others, left fielder Chase Headley and catcher Nick Hundley.

“I just think Chase and Hundley are going to be key components – guys that are open to learning and are not selfish and are not thinking that they are it and that they don't need to change anything,” he said. “They work hard every day. I really feel they improved a lot in the last month of the year. They are learning a lot. That knowledge will help. They will not be thinking, 'I've got to prove myself.' I think they can relax and just go out there and have fun.